Yoga Shown to Improve Anxiety, Study Finds

From the August 12, 2020 NYU Langone Health NewsHub

“Yoga improves symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, a condition with chronic nervousness and worry, suggesting the popular practice may be helpful in treating anxiety in some people.

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, a new study found that yoga was significantly more effective for generalized anxiety disorder than standard education on stress management, but not as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the gold standard form of structured talk therapy that helps patients identify negative thinking for better responses to challenges.”

Read the entire article here.

[Press release] UMass Medical School, WPI developing smartphone app to address stress eating

Last week I started using  the USDA nutrition/exercise SuperTracker after a hiatus of three years.
Agree –  stress is indeed a reason for overeating, this app would most likely help me.

From the 2 February 2015 University of Massachusetts press releaseBy Megan Bard, UMass Medical School Communications,and Michael Cohen, WPI Communications

Researchers at UMass Medical School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute are developing a stress-eating smartphone app that will help users better understand why they overeat, with the support of a $2 million award from the National Institutes of Health.

Sherry Pagoto, PhD

Bengisu Tulu, PhD

Development of the “RELAX” application and a pilot clinical study to evaluate its effectiveness will be led by Sherry Pagoto, PhD, associate professor of medicine at UMMS, and Bengisu Tulu, PhD, associate professor in the WPI Foisie School of Business, joint principal investigators on the grant.

“Most commercial apps available today focus on tracking diet and exercise, but do not help the user understand why they are eating so much and/or exercising so little,” Dr. Pagoto said. “Our clinical and research experience suggests that stress is a very common trigger for overeating and it is a barrier to exercise.”

RELAX will have two components: a mobile application that will enable patients to track their daily activities using a smartphone and a web-based tool clinicians can use to access patient information to help inform treatment.

“We want to use technology to help patients in real time, during their daily activities, and also to enhance the effectiveness of the time they spend face-to-face with their physician or counselor,” Dr. Tulu said.

Using text inputs, barcode scanning and GPS technology, the RELAX patient app will track eating patterns, daily activities, exercise, patient-mood and stress inducing events. The app will provide the patient with an itemized list of foods consumed, indicate the times of day identified as high-stress moments and illustrate the relationship between food intake and stress. The information collected will help the user to better understand his or her habits when it comes to emotional or stress eating.

For example, the patient-facing application will provide coaching for dietary choices or guided stress-reduction exercises to lessen the likelihood of overeating.

“Imagine a person driving into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, at a certain time of day, and getting prompted with a message asking them to think about what they are feeling and whether or not it is the right time to eat,” Tulu said.

Clinicians will be able to access their patients’ information collected through the RELAX patient app using the web-based application. The web tool will present information as easily digestible visual displays and feedback reports for the clinician to review.

Much of the time during traditional weight-loss counseling sessions is spent reviewing paper self-monitoring records and soliciting information from the patient about factors impacting their adherence, such as stress and stress eating. By using the RELAX web tool, clinicians can more quickly get to the heart of causal factors behind the patient’s eating habits, which can be difficult to identify using traditional counseling. The research team believes RELAX will help patients achieve better outcomes with fewer visits to their doctor or counselor.

The researchers hope the interactive design and the clinician’s ability to engage with the patient in a more data-rich way, both unique features of the RELAX application, will enable a more comprehensive approach to counseling patients about weight and stress management.

Read the entire article here

[Press release] Only 25 minutes of mindfulness meditation alleviates stress

From the 2-Jul-2014 EurkAlert

 PITTSBURGH—Mindfulness meditation has become an increasingly popular way for people to improve their mental and physical health, yet most research supporting its benefits has focused on lengthy, weeks-long training programs.

New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice – 25 minutes for three consecutive days – alleviates psychological stress. Published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people’s ability to be resilient under stress.

“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits,” said lead author J. David Creswell, associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

For the study, Creswell and his research team had 66 healthy individuals aged 18-30 years old participate in a three-day experiment. Some participants went through a brief mindfulness meditation training program; for 25 minutes for three consecutive days, the individuals were given breathing exercises to help them monitor their breath and pay attention to their present moment experiences. A second group of participants completed a matched three-day cognitive training program in which they were asked to critically analyze poetry in an effort to enhance problem-solving skills.

Following the final training activity, all participants were asked to complete stressful speech and math tasks in front of stern-faced evaluators. Each individual reported their stress levels in response to stressful speech and math performance stress tasks, and provided saliva samples for measurement of cortisol, commonly referred to as the stress hormone.

The participants who received the brief mindfulness meditation training reported reduced stress perceptions to the speech and math tasks, indicating that the mindfulness meditation fostered psychological stress resilience. More interestingly, on the biological side, the mindfulness mediation participants showed greater cortisol reactivity.

“When you initially learn mindfulness mediation practices, you have to cognitively work at it – especially during a stressful task,” said Creswell. “And, these active cognitive efforts may result in the task feeling less stressful, but they may also have physiological costs with higher cortisol production.”

Creswell’s group is now testing the possibility that mindfulness can become more automatic and easy to use with long-term mindfulness meditation training, which may result in reduced cortisol reactivity.

 

###

In addition to Creswell, the research team consisted of Carnegie Mellon’s Laura E. Pacilio and Emily K. Lindsay and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Kirk Warren Brown.

The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund supported this research.

For more information, visit http://www.psy.cmu.edu/people/creswell.html.

Related articles

• Even small amounts of mindfulness meditation can reduce stress
• Meditation Helps Significantly Reduce Symptoms of Stress
• Brief Mindfulness Meditation Can Lower Your Emotional And Chemical Stress Levels

Even Mild Stress Can Make It Difficult to Control Your Emotions

From the 26 August 2013 Science Daily article

Even mild stress can thwart therapeutic measures to control emotions, a team of neuroscientists at New York University has found. Their findings, which appear in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to the limits of clinical techniques while also shedding new light on the barriers that must be overcome in addressing afflictions such as fear or anxiety.

“We have long suspected that stress can impair our ability to control our emotions, but this is the first study to document how even mild stress can undercut therapies designed to keep our emotions in check,” said Elizabeth Phelps, a professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science and the study’s senior author. “In other words, what you learn in the clinic may not be as relevant in the real world when you’re stressed.”

In addressing patients’ emotional maladies, therapists sometimes use cognitive restructuring techniques — encouraging patients to alter their thoughts or approach to a situation to change their emotional response. These might include focusing on the positive or non-threatening aspects of an event or stimulus that might normally produce fear.

…

 

Read the entire article here

Related articles

• Even mild stress can make it difficult to control your emotions, NYU researchers find (esciencenews.com)
• Even mild stress can make it difficult to control your emotions, NYU researchers find (eurekalert.org)
• Just A Spoonful of Stress Hurts the Medicine (forfreepsychology.wordpress.com)

 

Infographic: How to Get 30 Minutes of Exercise at Your Desk

Who actually has time to exercise? As life gets busy, taking care of yourself is usually the first thing to move to the back burner. But to help you out, we looked at the average work day, and realized that there’s lots of potential for exercising at work, you just need to get a little creative.

This infographic has a series of circuits that will get your heart pounding at your desk. Good luck, and let us know what you think of the plan.

Related articles

• 14 Ways To Exercise At Work (nafriniselect.com)
• How to work out at work place (sweetsharing.wordpress.com)
• 25 Ways to Add 30 Minutes of Heart-Healthy Activity to Your Day (matthewkillorin.com)
• Top 10 List Of Health Infographics Top 10 Health Infographics (matthewkillorin.com)
• Infographic: How to Get 30 Minutes of Exercise at Your Desk. (millionideas.org)

 

Million Ideas

Who actually has time to exercise? As life gets busy, taking care of yourself is usually the first thing to move to the back burner. But to help you out, we looked at the average work day, and realized that there’s lots of potential for exercising at work, you just need to get a little creative.

This infographic has a series of circuits that will get your heart pounding at your desk. Good luck, and let us know what you think of the plan.

Related Posts: Infographic: Conquering Workplace Wellness, Workplace wellness: 5 tips to stay healthy in the office

View original post

[Booklet] Helping Children and Adolescents Cope with Violence and Disasters: What Parents Can Do

Practical ways parents and others can help children in the days, weeks, and months after traumatic events.
From the US National Institute on Mental Health.
Tips are practical and some are arranged by age groups.
An excerpt from the booklet 

How Parents Can Help:

After violence or a disaster parents and family should:

• Identify and address their own feelings — this will allow them to help others
• Explain to children what happened
• Let children know:
  • You love them
  • The event was not their fault
  • You will take care of them, but only if you can; be honest
  • It’s okay for them to feel upset
• DO:
  • Allow children to cry
  • Allow sadness
  • Let children talk about feelings
  • Let them write about feelings
  • Let them draw pictures
• DON’T:
  • Expect children to be brave or tough
  • Make children discuss the event before they are ready
  • Get angry if children show strong emotions
  • Get upset if they begin:
    • Bed-wetting
    • Acting out
    • Thumb-sucking
• If children have trouble sleeping:
  • Give them extra attention
  • Let them sleep with a light on
  • Let them sleep in your room (for a short time)
• Try to keep normal routines (such routines may not be normal for some children):
  • Bed-time stories
  • Eating dinner together
  • Watching TV together
  • Reading books, exercising, playing games
• If you can’t keep normal routines, make new ones together
• Help children feel in control:
  • Let them choose meals, if possible
  • Let them pick out clothes, if possible
  • Let them make some decisions for themselves, when possible.

 

Related articles

• How to talk with children about the Connecticut shooting, other tragedies (q13fox.com)
• SAMHSA Coping with Violence and Traumatic Events (samhsa.gov)
• How to Cope With Fear After School Shootings (livescience.com)
• NAEYC Tips for Talking to Young Children (drcindysimpson.com)
• Save the Children Offers 10 Tips to Help All Children Cope (5minutesformom.com)

 

The Health Benefits Of Living By The Sea

English: Coastal view of the touristic town Wimereux (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the 17 July 2012 article at Medical News Today

A new study from the European Centre for Environment & Human Health, Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Exeter, has revealed that people living near the coast tend to have better health than those living inland. ..

..Previous research has shown that the coastal environment may not only offer better opportunities for its inhabitants to be active, but also provide significant benefits in terms ofstress reduction. Another recent study conducted by the Centre in collaboration with Natural England found that visits to the coast left people feeling calmer, more relaxed and more revitalised than visits to city parks or countryside. One reason those living in coastal communities may attain better physical health could be due to the stress relief offered by spending time near to the sea.

Lead author of the study, Dr Ben Wheeler said:

“We know that people usually have a good time when they go to the beach, but there is strikingly little evidence of how spending time at the coast can affect health and wellbeing. By analysing data for the whole population, our research suggests that there is a positive effect, although this type of study cannot prove cause and effect. We need to carry out more sophisticated studies to try to unravel the reasons that may explain the relationship we’re seeing. If the evidence is there, it might help to provide governments with the guidance necessary to wisely and sustainably use our valuable coasts to help improve the health of the whole UK population”.

Dr Mathew White said:

“While not everyone can live by the sea, some of the health promoting features of coastal environments could be transferable to other places. Any future initiatives will need to balance the potential benefits of coastal access against threats from extreme events, climate change impacts, and the unsustainable exploitation of coastal locations.” ..

Related articles

• UK News: Living near sea ‘good for health’ (walesonline.co.uk)
• People ‘healthier’ beside the sea (bbc.co.uk)
• New research shows that coastal populations are healthier than those inland (eurekalert.org)
• Why it’s healthier to live at the coast than inland (blogs.independent.co.uk)
• Living near sea ‘good for health’ (standard.co.uk)
• Living near sea ‘good for health’ (express.co.uk)
• People Living Near the Sea May Be Healthier (livescience.com)
• Where You Live Can Impact Your Health – And Coastal Areas Are Better For You (businessinsider.com)
• Life’s a beach: Living near the coast is healthier than living inland, researchers say (dailymail.co.uk)